Home Again

We just spent four days "upcountry", mostly with Amanda, Justin, and the babies. Had a good time with them. The kids are growing up so fast. We have a lot of pictures and I will post a few for you.

We went to an indoor ice skating rink near their place one afternoon. The kids had never skated before and loved it. Even Emily (2-1/2 yrs.) got in on the act, although her version is to have someone push while she rides. Brianna and Gabriel did real well, both were starting to skate on their own at the end. Brianna didn't want to leave. She probably would be on the ice constantly if it were possible.

Cindy and I drove up to see Phyl and Wade Tuesday evening. We went to Lebanon the next morning to see Cindy's mother, before driving back to Philly for the trip home. That is exhausting! Tried to make a connection with Helen and Beth, but just couldn't do it. I think that, next time, we will go to one location and notify everyone where we are and how long we will be there. If anyone wants to see us, they can make the trip. That way we'll know how many people love us! Right? Of course, right.

Now it's back into the grind for a while. This trip killed my budget and I need to replenish before we go again.

Berty, I have a question. Who is Jess?

Love you all.

Our Day

Today, I cooked and cleaned. Didn't really seem like Christmas--seemed like a Saturday! We are celebrating Christmas with our family on the 29th, when Makayla can be with us. Michelle isn't coming home until the morning of the 29th (I think) and Joe, Shannon, Dave, and Jess all have to work, so we're having "Christmas" around 6:00 that night. Joe and Shannon will have Mattie and Lauren that night, so it all works out well. Not really sure what the kids thought about it--we just said "this is what we're doing" and they all said "ok", but it probably eliminated the rushing from one house to the other that you seem to do on Christmas day.

I wanted to do something special, so I made a nice dinner and John and Lynda came over. They always do their family Christmas on Christmas Eve and for years have went to Donna Plummer's on Christmas Day. Donna was getting elderly and moved from Knoxville to her son's in Nevada, so it worked out really nice for both of us. They brought us a gift--a picture Lynda had taken about 3 years ago of Morgan, Makayla, and their granddaughter, Terri, in a nice frame. The three little girls are all sitting in one "camp" chair and is an EXCELLENT picture of Morgan. Warms our hearts. Ed was pretty emotional today...cried several times...misses Morgan. I just kept busy (my strong suit, I think!). We're picking up Makayla on the 29th and will have her until the 3rd. Should be fun!

I did manage to get cards out, Phyl, but only because Ed addressed them all and signed them. I told him that I wasn't going to mail any because I didn't have time. He said that he would do a few if I wanted him to, so I gave him the cards and the rolodex and when I came home that night, he told me he had done 35 (or some such!). I guess it occupied him all day long. I was so proud of him. Well, it's been a long day, so I'm going to close.

Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas! Thanks for the cards--sorry I didn't get any out this year. Take care of yourselves. Hope you all can put difficult circumstances aside and enjoy the day. Love you.

One from Cindy

This is a picture that Cindy painted as a school assignment. She took the apple blossom photo I shot, cut out a small section, blew it up to fit the canvas, and got an "A" for her efforts. Looks good, doesn't it?

Numero Dos

Like I said. I can see a distinct improvement over the first one. Now all I have to do is decide who to give it to. Cindy says I should keep it, paint more, and do a show.

Enjoy

Hi all. Just to let you all know, I am doing OK. I still don't know whether Rose and I will get back together or not, but at this time I just keep telling myself that it is the choice that she has made, and I feel confident that I could not have changed the choices that she made regardless of whether or not I could go back in time knowing what I know now. I also feel that I did not treat her wrongly, so I do not beat myself up thinking that I should have done something differently. I am staying in contact with her, I either talk to her or text her almost every day. Some days I think that she will be back soon, other times I think that it is a lost cause. I have made up my mind and I have told her that I will give her some time to decide what she wants to do, but I will not put my entire life on hold while she tries to decide. She will have to make a decision whether she wants to be married to me and be a part of this family or whether she wants some other life, and she will have to make that decision fairly soon.
On another note, Nate and Amanda and their kids are home for Christmas until the 28th. Bambi & Kevin came over tonight, so all the kids were here for a while. Really enjoyed the time together. The kids are all getting so big & I really do enjoy them.
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and get lots of time to spend with your families. I do love you all. Love, Bob

First of Many, or Getting Better All the Time

OK,don't laugh. Here it is. You can skim down a few posts to see the original. I'm quite pleased with it (for starters), but I can see every mistake I made. I'm going to have to create a learning curve for grass. (Looks like little, crawly worms, doesn't it?) But the perspective and the lines are quite close, so I think that I just need experience.

I think for now I'm going to focus on close up shots of beautiful flowers. I have a picture of apple blossoms that I took a few years back in PA and I know a place here that has a vine hanging over a fence with gorgeous purple flowers.

Here's to Numero Dos. Merry Chritiquing!

I have the painting done and framed. Still need to get a picture to upload. Looks pretty good, or at least I think so.

Starting to get ready for Christmas

We went to the tree farm last Sat. with Tara & Tom and got our Christmas tree--it's in the garage. And today I shopped for gifts for my volunteers. If I get to work tomorrow, I'll start wrapping them. We're supposed to have a storm so if it's really bad, I'll stay home and start baking cookies. I have scheduled cookie packages for all of our patients to be delivered next week so the volunteers will be bringing in their cookies on Mon & Tues. Then on Wed. afternoon, we'll package them up and spend Thurs & Fri delivering them. Plus I have to bake some for our house. We've already gone to one Christmas party and have two more on the schedule. Did a little bit of shopping last Sat evening and probably will do more this weekend. No decorating done yet in our house.

How's it going with you?

First Attempt!

For the first time in my life, I'm going to paint a picture. This photo came from my front yard and has been sitting on my computer ever since. There is a pencil sketch on the wall in front of me. Yesterday I drew outlines on a canvas and am just about ready to start putting paint to it. I have been reading one of Cindy's books on color. She is giving me some technical advice, but the end result will be mine entirely. When I get it finished, I will post a photo here.

Hi all. Been a while since I wrote anything. Been busy, just got back from a few days at Mike Mitchell's. Hunting, got a couple of shots, but nothing to show for it. Oh well, there is still some time left in the season. Nate's are coming home tonight for the weekend.

Wanted you all to hear it from me before rumors get spread around, Rose has left us for the time being, and maybe permanently. Roger and I went to Mike's on Friday night, and on Saturday Morning she left, took her clothes, her truck, some savings, and a few other things. She apparently met a friend (male) who had flown out from Nebraska at the Buffalo airport and they drove together back to Nebraska. I just talked to her for the first time since she left, she said that she doesn't know what she wants to do yet.

I will let you know as much as I can as soon as I can. I would ask for our sake (both hers and mine) that you keep this info to yourselves at this time unless someone asks, then if possible share as little as possible. She may at some time come back (I am not real optomistic at this point, and I am not certain what I want), and I would prefer to share the news with people as I feel they need to know. Please do not judge her harshly, for my sake if not for hers.

Love, Bob

The Last Piece Is In Place

The carport, sunporch, & deck were added over the last couple of weeks so the house is completely framed. This addition makes it look much larger even though it's only the size of a two car garage. But because of the height, it looks big. Wade has been shingling the roof since the weather was so good and working on the insulation too. It's coming along really well and keeping him busy. No nibbles on this house--actually very few lookers--so no reason to rush to finish. And with the holidays coming, I suspect traffic will become even slower.

I just remembered that today is Mom's birthday and her death day. She would have been 83 years old. I still think about her a lot.

Miss you, Mom. Happy Birthday!

Knauer Knews!!

Hey..How are you all? We are doing pretty good here...Boring life but busy....work, sleep, do papers, work, sleep, clean house, do papers...get the drift?? But anyhow...Life goes on and seems to be going faster and faster...can't believe it's almost Christmas time again...Good grief!!

Well don't think I ever updated about our trip...Will post some pics later when I get aroundtoit...but we went almost 2300 miles. Left on Thursday am and came back on Monday afternoon...It was way too many miles for that many days...Don't think we'll do that again..We just went into Ohio and Michigan (as Roge said--it's too far to go to Wisconsin and down into Indiana too...As it was we ended up driving a lot of interstates just to get somewhere and then to get home at a decent time..Don't want to do that again but ...we did get to see some fun stuff and we did enjoy ourselves. Went up to Cleveland Ohio and saw Lake Erie from there--had to get down and taste the water there--never saw waves on water that wasn't salt water so wanted to be sure...That was fun... Then checked out the Cleveland Browns stadium--not a browns fan but....still was cool to see something you only see on TV. ... Then went on to Michigan. saw a lot of flat land and alot of trees--some colorful some not--went up the West side of Michigan, so saw Lake Michigan, and alot of pretty county there. then went up to Mackinaw Bridge and crossed into the "Upper Peninsula" . The Mackinaw Bridge and the Upper Peninsula were worth the whole trip....The U/P is very remote and not much up there--makes you realize how the country was years ago before we all were here...We really liked it up there and liked seeing all the lakes..Went up to the northern end so we could say we touched Lake Superior too...Would have liked to travel across the U/P and came down through Wisconsin but knew we just didn't have enough time to really enjoy it... Maybe another year...We were kinda disappointed in that we were surprised at how flat Ohio and Michigan are...There are not a lot of hills...Of course, I thought "go north--see hills" like in PA--found out that wasn't so...So we decided we are more "hill country" people and will travel to those more next time.. Wherever that may be....But we still had a good time and enjoyed being by ourselves and also being away from work and stress here so it was good....

well, I'd better go...will write more again soon about the rest of our life...write soon everyone...

hello

Just wanted to tell everybody I love you and your all awesome people

"So Long, Farewell, Aufweidersehen, Goodbye"

What a week it's been. I'm glad it's almost over. Don't ever want to go back.

I started feeling a little funny last Sunday, but didn't think too much about it. By Monday morning I knew I had the flu, but worked most of the day anyway. (I did knock off earlier than usual.) Monday night was bad, bad, bad--fever, chills, nasty headache, diarrhea, painful joints, etc. Tuesday was a repeat that didn't start to let up until afternoon. Wednesday was better, but I didn't do anything. On Thursday, I went to Starbucks for a cup of coffee and cleaned around the house a little. That night, I went to Wal-Mart and bought some Pepto-Bismol and Alka-Seltzer. Yesterday, I went to a large kitchen remodel we are doing just a few miles away and worked all day. Had at least seven men there and got a lot done, but I was whipped at the end. I'm feeling fairly good right now, considering, except for my hands, head, belly, and just generally overall, which aren't back up to snuff.

I've had to force myself to eat simply to maintain, lost a lot of strength which I need back. For about three days, all I had were two bowls of chicken noodle soup and a couple Reese's cups. I did chug the water though, didn't dare to get dehydrated.

I haven't been sick for years and this one made up for all those others that missed me. I think this has been the worst flu I've ever had. Since Cindy was in "Joisey", no one was here to feel sorry for me except the dog, and he spent at least as much time sleeping as I did.

Speaking of Cindy, last time I talked to her, she had the flu, Amanda and the three oldest kids had the flu, Justin was gone most of the time working, and then the mother-in-law showed up. She was not a happy camper. She'll be flying back to Jax on Sunday afternoon, which will probably make a difference. We'll be flying up Dec. 27 for three days, so might be able to see some of you then.

Berty, how are you doing? I think about you a lot.

Love you all.

Makayla

I got a letter from Makayla on Friday. It says and I quote...

Gramma, That was so nice of you. I was wundring wat you wur dowing to. Love, Makayla I am cey borging.

Now, I'll translate... She was wondering what I was doing also. (I wrote in my letter to her what I was doing at the moment--can't remember what that was.) She is keyboarding (in school). She gets her d's, b's, and g's a little confused and she writes just like she thinks it sounds! Sometimes, I have to think for a little while what she's trying to say...

Beth suggested a great idea. When I write to her, I enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope. That way, she can write back to me without it being an issue to anyone. This is my second letter from her. I was SO happy to get it--I can't imagine how she must feel when she gets a letter from someone. On that note, if you have time to write a short note to a little girl whose life has been topsy-turvy, I'd be forever grateful. Her address is 30 Pee Wee Ln, Duncannon, PA 17020.

Happy Birthday to you to Roge!!

Meant to say something about Dad's on his birthday...Obviously I need a few (maybe a hundred or so) or those roundtoits too, Bob!!! Get this into production and soon!!! But didn't.....so this am...saw that today was the 29th and oh my gosh...here it is Roger's birthday already.... So anyway, Happy Birthday to you....hope it was a good one.....

Cigars All Around!!

We have a new little girl, Sophia Grace, who arrived on the scene last week. I'm not sure which day. She lives with Amanda and Justin, along with the other three. I now have seven grandchildren, six of whom are girls. Girls.

Cindy flew there yesterday morning for two weeks. Amanda needs the help. She developed a hernia during her pregnancy and is not allowed to lift anything until it heals.

They are expecting to drive to Lebanon one day to see Cindy's mother and may stop in to see Beth and Helen. Anticipate a phone call. It might happen.

Cindy will be getting lots of pictures while she is there. I will post some of them for you.

Important Question

Are you all leading dull, boring lives?

Construction Photos Continued

First--looking down into the great room from the loft. Second--the kitchen full of scaffolding and Shadow, the supervisor. Third--looking up toward the loft. Fourth--the fireplace. And last--view of the front windows--all in but the one that was the wrong size.

Construction Photos

Was feeling extremely weary the last couple of days so today I took a half day off from work--the afternoon--and took Shadow out to the new house and spent the afternoon watching Wade work. Well.........I did a little bit. Shadow and I walked to the end of the property and took some progress photos so I'm uploading them for you to see. The first one is from the inside of the balcony. Second is the front and carport side--carport is not yet done. Third is front and balcony side. Fourth is back side and fifth is backside from the end of our property.

Cindy's cousin, Jeff, is with us for a week. He lives in Lancaster County. We're going to Cocoa Beach, which is south of Cape Canaveral, for the weekend. We got two nights at a Best Western for $30. That's right, $30, and 90 minutes at a time share pitch. Of course, the answer is no, not interested, but I can sit through it for 90 minutes.

I need the break. I feel like the Energizer bunny. In addition to my regular job, I'm trying to put Millennium Tile together. We're picking up some jobs, usually piggy-backing off Patterson, but hey, work is work. The situation at Patterson is starting to look a little grim. Construction is way off and we're starting to feel it, so maybe a new startup business is a good thing. We'll see what happens.

Planning our trip

Planning our annual "honeymoon" or anniversary trip... Two years ago went to New England, last year down in West Virginia.. This year we are going to Ohio, Michigan and possibly Wisconsin, Indiana and then back home...Lots of travel time, road miles ....but just to see the country and stop at a few things to see and look at...LOVE IT!! Wish we had more time but....we don't so...this works for now...Planning on leaving Thursday am (the 8th) and gonna be back home on Monday the 12th... Guess we'll have to start flying to a place and then driving back or touring out there--not many places we can drive to...anymore.... If you have any suggestions (you travelers) please let us know asap.... looking forward to just getting away....

Hi everyone.... I enjoyed seeing the reunion pictures (despite the multiple attempts to get them posted!!) Sorry I couldn't join you. Where is 2010? Glad to hear all are well. My arm is healing faster than expected according to the surgeon--God's blessing no doubt. Unfortunately He said I will probably have a nagging ache whenever the weather changes or is damp etc.. just like my patients! Now I really feel old!
Nice picture of the retirement house momma-- BUT.... I must say I am shocked by your vulgarity. Last time I checked PUTZ was not a word I would ever expect you to say or print. Boy you sure do find ways to surprise me and make me laugh.
Chat soon

Techno Putz Strikes Again

Last weekend I took my camera to our new house and took quite a few pictures to add to the blog for you guys to see but when I got home there was only ONE on the camera. Not sure how that happened!!! So I decided that I would take more pictures the next day but I forgot the camera! So you only get to see pictures from one side due to my incompetence. The construction is moving along quite quickly and fairly smoothly which is always a good thing.

Where is everybody??

Hey!!What's happening to our blog??? Why doesn't everyone try to post something about how their week is going at least once a week... We NEED to stay connected and know what going on in each others lives....Help...please... Post your blog, today!!! (I'm trying out for a salesman position,,,,just joking...) Love ya all.

Lil' Cutie, Lovebirds, Three Stooges

now I've got the hang of it.....more pictures

Okay..not that I've tried to save these 3 different times........

Okay...I'm not the smartest knife in the Mitchell drawer......

Reunion 2009

Ok...Here's the pictures from this weekend...Had a great time...enjoyed it..Hope you all did too..

This is our guard dog, Lukie. Originally, he was with Joey, but couldn't stay at his apartment, so we inherited him. At first, he gravitated to Cindy, but lately I've become his person.

I'm teaching him to say "Please" by sitting down and holding up one paw. I want him to go to the door and do this when he needs to go out. Whether it will happen or not is debatable.

He gets quite excited when I pay Cindy any attention. I think he's a little bit jealous. He's never been anything more than a nuisance, but the other day he got a tad more aggressive. She was sitting on the sofa and when I leaned over to kiss her, he bit me. In the ass. No lasting damage, though, and the only scars left are psychological.

Look at him! Doesn't he look vicious?

Seems like it's been forever.

I've been working with two other men, both Albanians, to set up and run a tile installation business--Millennium Tile. History is that I was at Starbucks one day about a 1-1/2 yrs. ago and noticed them sitting at another table. Since I was wearing my official Patterson shirt, they approached me and asked for work. We had a few little jobs, so I gave them a chance. After a few months, they came to me with the proposal that I act as CEO for their business, which at that time was disappearing due to lack of work. Since then we have been slowly building to the point of bidding commercial projects, the last of which was over $61,000.00 just for the tile work. Unfortunately, we haven't landed any commercial contracts, but there is some residential work to fill in.

Needless to say, I haven't had a lot of spare time lately. These commercial jobs have bid deadlines which usually fall within two to three weeks from the time I find out about them, so we have to scramble. Not quite sure where all this is going to lead, but hopefully I can parlay this into some "moving money" and, with communications the way they are today, still be able to work the business from Montana. (By the way, Genti and Columbo are expert tile mechanics, so I won't have to lay any unless I want to.)

We're still on for Montana. Cindy has made it clear that she's ready to leave Florida and, as long as she is working and holding her own, I might actually reach the goal of $10,000.00 to move with. It's feasible, but I will have to work a lot of Saturdays to make it.

Any road, I am counting down the days until next Friday morning when I fly out of Jax and head to Rochester. Looking forward to seeing everyone there. I can almost smell the steaks grillin'.

P.S. The staples came out of the head recently. Looks like everything is healing fine. Time will tell if it knocked any sense into me.

Back to School

Well, Katherine went off to school on Sat, Aug 22 and started classes last Wednesday. I started class today. Yes, I'm going back to school. I'm going to go to Lancaster Bible College and do their degree completion program and then continue on and will end up with my Masters in Marriage & Family Counseling. It should take me total of about 4 years to finish. Ultimately I want to work as a Family Counselor (not so much the marriage but work more with Teenagers, parenting, etc.) and I also hope to serve in disaster relief. It's going to be a busy next several years but there is no time like the present so off I go to school. Actually, I think I will be able to do all of my undergrad classes online if I choose so I'm really happy about the flexibility. I'm really pretty excited about it all.

Love ya,
Beth

Lighting strike

We had lighting strike our house not once but twice last week...On Wednesday night, during a bad storm it blew out our living room TV. Was on, then went off and then can't come back on...On Thursday night when I got home, Gary said...well two more TV's ....and counting. Here it took our little TV (that I had put on top of our broken living room one--real redneck style)!! and also Brad's TV downstairs...also Brad's Xbox, Gary's old playstation, Brad VCR/DVD player, our telephone device (our phone is on Vonage--through our internet), computer modem, and something in my computer. So we didn't have a phone til yesterday...that was long..and no internet on my computer til today...that was long...Brad's watching tv on his computer...Gary's tv still works or we would all be crazy!!!....But we are getting by...turned it into homeowners but that also takes awhile and is a process...it's amazing how much you count on those "electronic" things and don't really think you do til you don't have them...

Other than that...not much is new...Looking forward to the reunion...

Swimming with the sharks, or Hammerhead

Had a small accident yesterday at work. Nothing serious, just a trip to the local acute care clinic for 1-1/2 hours and eight staples.

We were tearing down a chimney. One of the men had placed his hammer on a wall, which I didn't know about. I walked underneath it to move a stepladder, and...Voila! You see the results. Needless to say, it spoiled a good bit of the rest of my day. I'm OK. It caused Cindy more trouble than it did me. Have to go back in a week to pull the staples.

You'd think a person would learn after all these years.

Surrounding Landscape

A few picture of the area around the house. And our modern outhouse! teehee

Foundation Is Done

The foundation walls came last week so Shadow and I went up on the weekend to inspect and take pictures. Actually I was getting him out of the house so potential buyers could look at it--we had two couples come to look.

Progress Photo v.2

This is a pretty good shot of the job I've been working on. Got it on the run. Met the city inspector yesterday afternoon--passed with flying colors, just a couple small items to tend to. Glad it's this far, maybe I can take a breather.

I have also included a couple pictures of a large garage we built in the spring. The owner has room to store three cars inside with working area for another one, a half bath, and a 15' x 36' "man cave" in the back, complete with pool table, juke box, pinball machine, beer tap, and work table for his model airplanes. Drywall ceilings with knockdown, beadboard panelling, AC.

Nice!! Man, what you can do with a little bit of money. I'm going to be doing some extra work for him a little later on this year after it cools down and get some of that.

Progress Photos

We have a well, we have stone and we have drain pipes. Foundation walls will be here on Friday. Shadow, the supervisor, does not like it. He was much happier when the hole was full of water that he could play in! All he has now is a couple of small puddles.